this

sometimes i bore myself. it's weird to me that i am writing this, and someone is going to click some link from wherever they are and read this to see what i have to say. what's even weirder is that i do the same thing for a handful of other people's blogs every week day. that is truly fascinating. it amazes me that we can do this.

i remember the first time i heard about the internet. it was somewhere around 1988 or 1989. one of my teachers was trying to get the school system to put pro.di.gy on the computers in our classroom, so that we could communicate with people in other places on the computer - sending messages and reading information. i had visions of a future where students would be in classrooms where everyone in every seat had a computer - where you wouldn't even have to go to school because you could communicate with your teacher without leaving the house. i never knew that i would be in one of those classrooms, with a computer that could fit in a briefcase, simultaneously ignoring a lecture, sending messages to two friends in real time, and checking on the weather. look how far we have traveled, and how fast! instant messaging, electronic mail, web logs are so commonplace now that we don't even bother to refer to them without abbreviation. what's interesting is that in the same way that it's hard for some in my generation to imagine a world where the milk man literally brought milk to your house, today's youth don't remember what it was like before we could just log on to the rest of the world and literally have it at your fingertips.

it's like the internet is doing for communication what gutenberg's printing press did for the distribution of books and for literacy. anyone with an internet connection can meet someone who is on the other side of the planet, find dating partners, look up the word antidisestablishmentarianism, learn how to cook a souffle, cuss out their congressman, pay bills, and be a worldwide published author in the course of an afternoon. people have friends they haven't even met. there are blog readers who know more about me than the people at work who see me everyday. i admire and/or have a distaste for people that i couldn't pick out of a lineup if my student loan default depended on it, unless maybe they started writing, and i was given a chance to discern their writing style and tone. what a trip! some people are concerned about all of the time we're spending on line communicating face-to-screen. hey, if you have no other life, then by all means, close your browser now and go outside to remember that you live on earth and are free to roam it, not through a search engine, but using your own two feet.

but blogging and message boards and email enhance the fun of writing for me. if it wasn't for this blog and the open mic, i would have no audience for my sophomoric fits and starts of creative expression, save my personal journal and/or my mama and close friends that i would sometimes read my poetry to. and there's no way i would realistically be able to keep pen pals with so many people from so many places all at once. so, with that said, yay internet.

which brings me to my last point. it's weird to me that even though i had absolutely nothing to say when i first started writing this, i found something to say. and what's weirder, you read it. from houston/philly/england/jarrell/alexandria/medford/miami/san diego/nigeria/washington state or wherever it is that you are. thank you for reading - for taking time to see what i had to say, despite the fact that i'm just a person like you, who simply likes to write for the sake of using words and who lacks the ability to be interesting every day. i appreciate your comments and your dropping in. you guys encourage me to keep writing just as much as the open mic audiences do, fanning the flames of a passion that i have for articulating emotion and thoughts into words and images that can be meaningfully shared. i'm truly happy to have the outlet.